NetWitness Platform vs Sentinel comparison

NetWitness and OpenText are both solutions in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category. NetWitness is ranked #31 with an average rating of 8.0, while OpenText is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.2. NetWitness holds a 0.6% mindshare in SIEM, compared to OpenText’s 3.6% mindshare. Additionally, 75% of NetWitness users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 81% of OpenText users who would recommend it.

NetWitness Platform

Read 37 NetWitness Platform reviews

1,469 Views
955 Comparison Views

75% willing to recommend

Sentinel

Read 16 Sentinel reviews

2,736 Views
2,681 Comparison Views

81% willing to recommend

NetWitness Platform

Sentinel

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

NetWitness Platform and Sentinel are leading contenders in the cybersecurity market. Sentinel seems to have the upper hand due to its advanced functionality and effectiveness, which users feel justifies its pricing.

Features: NetWitness Platform offers strong analytics, real-time monitoring capabilities, and robust support services. Sentinel features integration with other Microsoft services, advanced threat detection, and seamless integration in advanced networking environments.

Room For Improvement: NetWitness Platform needs enhanced scalability, better threat intelligence capabilities, and improved customization options. Sentinel could benefit from more user-friendly setup processes, better customization options, and improved user interfaces.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NetWitness Platform users find customer support highly responsive but face deployment challenges. Sentinel offers quick deployment, integrates easily into existing Microsoft infrastructures, and has adequate customer support.

Pricing and ROI: NetWitness Platform is considered expensive by some users but offers justifiable ROI due to its high performance. Sentinel, while also not cheap, is viewed as providing good value due to its extensive features and integration capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed NetWitness Platform vs. Sentinel Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

NetWitness Platform vs. Sentinel

July 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

NetWitness Platform

Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

31st

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Log Management (35th)

Sentinel

Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

13th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of NetWitness Platform is 0.6%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sentinel is 3.6%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

Featured Reviews

MOTASHIM Al Razi

CISO at One Bank Limited

It is a stable solution, but they should make the user interface easier to understand

The solution's initial setup takes work. We have to organize multiple paths and many features. The deployment process takes less than a week. But it takes a month to complete if we want to make the solution smarter by integrating it with various devices. I rate the process as a six out of ten.

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JaideepSingh

Technology Specialist at a government with 51-200 employees

An automated solution that helped me detect threats in less than half the time it used to take

Sentinel gave us logs to tell us what's going right and wrong in your environment so we could secure the network. We also got multiple kinds of logs. By running some queries from the logs, we could find and fix the anomalies in the environment. Sentinel's threat visibility was great at telling us if we had something going on in our environment. We had to set up alerts in our environment based on the logs. If we had the right alerts set up, we got notified about threats and where security was lacking, so we could also take care of that. Sentinel's threat intelligence helped us prepare and take proactive steps for potential threats before they hit. Having preparation before a threat has helped our security operations. When I was using it, I used to keep going into my dashboards and looking for any threats on a weekly basis, or maybe two or three times a week. Based on that, we would recommend certain changes to the server and infrastructure teams to block or allow some ports. Sentinel's threat intelligence helped plan security against risks.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Incident management is its most valuable feature."

"It's fully scalable. There is no limit. Of course, the license limits per day the number of terabytes. In my opinion, it's very flexible."

"Alerting Module: It provides real-time event processing language on all the logs/packets stream for advanced alerting, i.e., using SQL LIKE statements."

"The most valuable features are the threat prediction and network forensics."

"NetWitness Platform is valuable for creating rules that the solution must detect."

"The packet capture aspect of it is a valuable feature because it is quite different from a traditional SIEM solution that only carries out investigations based on captured logs."

"It gives the capability for the incident response team to correlate logs to identify any kind of problem like malware and incidents in a general sense, both for logs and packets."

"The product has a user-friendly interface and a valuable feature for threat intelligence integration."

More NetWitness Platform pros

"The stability is phenomenal and we never had any issues with downtime or even had to restart."

"Sentinel gave us logs to tell us what's going right and wrong in your environment so we could secure the network."

"One of the most valuable features is the business intelligence engine. It's very important because it keeps track of everything that's happening and alerts us if something is different than expected. The first time I used it, I was shocked at how well it performed. Another valuable feature that I think makes this product worth the price you pay for it is that it connects to basically every system that provides some form of logging, and it's very easy to set up what triggers this."

"The solution lets us get all the logs properly and regularly monitor customer infrastructure."

"The most valuable feature is the flexible log for identifying security threats inside an application. Sentinel is very good at this."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is that it provides a central locking system for many event sources."

"The solution's Kusto Query Language (KQL) execution time is pretty good."

"We can do advanced hunting queries and modify SQL queries to get desired results based on the rules triggering over the console."

More Sentinel pros

Cons

"Security needs improvement."

"The system looks like it is a mix of a bunch of different systems, and nothing looked like it was quite together."

"The log system is a bit complex and has room for improvement."

"The initial setup is complex. There are other solutions that are easier to implement."

"The system architecture is complex and sometimes it’s hard to troubleshoot potential problems."

"If we have the ability to run a dynamic analysis through malware in the same suite, it would be great to have a sandbox solution to analyze malware through dynamic analysis."

"There are instances where you try to run the reports and then it does not give you the desired outcome."

"The documentation is not as structured as I would like, personally, and I think that it can be improved and made much more user-friendly."

More NetWitness Platform cons

"The solution does not allow outsourced authorizations."

"There is a need for more flexibility in customization, especially when working with different vendors and platforms."

"There is no integration in the web-side of the tool."

"This product's connection to certain types of cloud systems could be improved. We can do Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, but there are a lot of other things happening in the cloud that we do not connect well enough to. This product could be improved with better connection to cloud-based solutions."

"I rate Sentinel a six out of ten for scalability."

"It is an ancient product."

"You need a lot of Unix scripting knowledge in order to manage the tool, which is one of the main issues that we faced."

"The dashboard and customer view should be improved"

More Sentinel cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The new pricing and licensing mechanisms are fair. I would advise always to get the full solution (i.e., not only Logs)."

"This is a pricey solution; it's not cheap."

"The licenses are good but the cost is very expensive."

"The product is expensive."

"We are on an annual license for the use of the solution."

"It provides tools to assist in selecting the appropriate license and usage scenarios."

"The NetWitness Platform may be affordable only for enterprise-level customers, as it may not be within the budget of small and medium-sized businesses."

"The tool is very expensive, so I rate the pricing a ten out of ten. The solution has an annual subscription."

More NetWitness Platform pricing and cost advice

"Sentinel's slightly on the expensive side."

"We inquired about getting support from the vendor, Micro Focus, but the cost was very high."

"We receive a pricing discount because of our ongoing partnership with Micro Focus."

"Sentinel is a subscription-based solution."

"The solution’s pricing is aligned with its competitors."

"Sentinel is moderately priced."

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Comparison Review

Vinod Shankar

Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at Deloitte & Touche

Feb 26, 2015

HP ArcSight vs. IBM QRadar vs. McAfee Nitro vs. Splunk vs. RSA Security vs. LogRhythm

We at Infosecnirvana.com have done several posts on SIEM. After the Dummies Guide on SIEM, we are following it up with a SIEM Product Comparison – 101 deck. So, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Let me know what you think by posting your comments below. The key products compared here are…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about NetWitness Platform?

The product's initial setup phase was not at all difficult.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetWitness Platform?

The pricing is comparable to others, and I consider the cost to be intermediate. Specific cost details are unknown to me.

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What needs improvement with NetWitness Platform?

There is currently no need for improvement in the SIEM ( /categories/security-information-and-event-management-siem ), though there could be potential enhancements by integrating with AI.

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What do you like most about NetIQ Sentinel?

The solution lets us get all the logs properly and regularly monitor customer infrastructure.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetIQ Sentinel?

Sentinel is moderately priced.

See all answers

What needs improvement with NetIQ Sentinel?

There are still a few vendor-specific devices for which Sentinel needs to work on integration, such as Netskope devices. Also, we often face region-wise outages during operation due to product team...

See all answers

Comparisons

Splunk Enterprise Security vs NetWitness Platform

Compared 23% of the time

IBM Security QRadar vs NetWitness Platform

Compared 19% of the time

Elastic Security vs NetWitness Platform

Compared 12% of the time

RSA enVision vs NetWitness Platform

Compared 9% of the time

Trellix Network Detection and Response vs NetWitness Platform

Compared 9% of the time

More NetWitness Platform Competitors

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Sentinel

Compared 16% of the time

IBM Security QRadar vs Sentinel

Compared 16% of the time

Wazuh vs Sentinel

Compared 15% of the time

Google Chronicle Suite vs Sentinel

Compared 12% of the time

Cortex XSIAM vs Sentinel

Compared 6% of the time

More Sentinel Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

NetWitness Platform

August 2025

Download NetWitness Platform product report

Buyer's Guide

Sentinel

July 2025

Download Sentinel product report

Also Known As

RSA Security Analytics

NetIQ Sentinel, Novell SIEM

Overview

NetWitness Platform is an evolved SIEM and threat detection and response solution that functions as a single, unified platform for ALL your security data. It features an advanced analyst workbench for triaging alerts and incidents, and it orchestrates security operations programs end to end. In short: NetWitness Platform is all you need to run an intelligent SOC.

NetWitness

Sentinel is a full-featured Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solution that simplifies the deployment, management and day-to-day use of SIEM, readily adapts to dynamic enterprise environments and delivers the true "actionable intelligence" security professionals need to quickly understand their threat posture and prioritize response.

OpenText

Sample Customers

Los Angeles World Airports, Reply

Faysal Bank, GaVI, Handelsbanken, ISC Mªnster, Lambeth Council, Swisscard, The Municipality of Siena, Tukes, University of Dayton, University of the Sunshine Coast

Buyer's Guide

NetWitness Platform vs. Sentinel

July 2025

Free Report: NetWitness Platform vs. Sentinel

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